Thursday, July 24, 2008

Exoskeleton Invasion

Well, not really an invasion, just a troop advancement. In the first picture, you get a tiny picture (click to blow it up) of the hundreds of spider webs that have cropped up all over my house. If we were in a real battle situation, I would have to say that they've 'won the hill'. We have spiderlings (baby spiders) in every corner, under every piece of furniture and in every window. Right now I'm not sure if they are the enemy or Switzerland. On one hand they make everything look as though I'm a bad housekeeper, which I am, so what else is new. On the other hand, their webs capture flies, scorpions, pill bugs, dog hair dust bunnies, and ants. That last creature makes me think the spiders are allies----the ants.

The second picture is of carpenter ants. Big ones. Several months ago I heard a scritching noise in the wall in my bedroom. I immediately thought of mice, but ruled them out because it was daytime. I banged on the wall and the noise went away. Out of sight out of mind, huh? Over the course of a month or so, I heard the noise in the daytime and the night, all in the same area. My mind wandered back to a time in the spring when I'd seen ginormous ants on the windowsill outside where I was now hearing the noise in the wall. Fast forward and now we have a carpenter ant nest in the wall. We don't really want to "nuke" the bedroom by having a professional pesticide guy come out, so we spray ant killer stuff on the baseboards once a week. So far, it seems to be working. Every day there are new ant bodies on the battlefield that is our bedroom rug. The scritching has gone away, but bodies continue to pile up. We'll continue our battle until the ants retreat or are all killed. Wish us luck.